History of Podcasts
The podcasting system consists of three key elements: the digital format, a portable digital player, and automatic downloading. The podcasting prototype The first podcast came to being in September 2000. The early MP3 player manufacturer, i2Go rolled out a system that the selection, automatic downloading, and storage of serial episodic audio content on PCs and portable devices, in order to supply content for its products. i2Go introduced a digital audio news and entertainment service on MyAudio2Go.com where users could subscribe and edit personal programs for the system to auto-download episodic news, sports, entertainment, weather, and music in digital audio format. The products were supported through software named i2GoMediaManager and the eGo file transfer application which could be programmed to automatically download the latest episodic content available from user-selected content types to a PC or portable device as designated. The service lasted over a year, but succumbed when the i2Go company ran out of capital during the clash of dot com bubble and folded. RRS and Audioblogging In October, 2000, Dave Winer, a software developer and author of the RSS feed system received requests for “audioblogging” features in RSS feeds from bloggers who wanted to include more content with the use of audio, and add some personal elements into the blog. After Winer talked with Adam Curry, a user of Radio Userland’s Manila and Radio blogging and RSS aggregator software about the concept of “enclosure”—automatically detecting and downloading multimedia feeds. Also, Tristan Louis drafted a proposal of using such technology to enable multimedia in RSS feeds. Then, Winer launched the new functionality in RSS 0.92, by defining a new element, called “enclosure,” which would simply pass the address to a media aggregator. First podcatcher software The last piece of the podcast technology is the podcatcher software—news feed aggregator or collector for podcasts. The first podcatcher software was written by Curry. He offered his blog readers an RSS-to-iPod script (iPodder) that moved MP3 files from Userland Radio to iTunes, and encouraged other developers to build on the idea. The software checked for new updates, read the file enclosure to see where to go and download the audio file. The MP3 was then automatically transferred to an iPod. Other Milestones *February 12, 2004: The first appearance of the word “podcast” in history was in an article in The Guardian. The creation of the term is credited to Ben Hammersley who wrote the article and used podcast as a synonym for audioblogging or amateur Internet radio. The word stuck. *By October, 2004, detailed how-to podcast articles had begun to appear online, and a month later, Liberated Syndication (LibSyn) launched what was apparently the first Podcast Service Provider, offering storage, bandwidth, and RSS creation tools. *In November 2004, “Podcasting” was first defined in Wikipedia. Podcasting networks started to appear on the scene with podcasters affiliating with one another. *On February 11, 2005, PRI's The World became the first daily public radio news program to podcast through its technology podcast hosted by Clark Boyd. *June 2005, Apple added podcasting to its iTunes 4.9 music software and built a directory of podcasts into its iTunes Music Store. The new iTunes could subscribe to, download, and organize podcasts, which left a separate aggregator application unnecessary for many users. Apple also promoted the creation of podcasts using its GarageBand and QuickTime Pro software and the MPEG 4 Audio (M4A) format instead of MP3. Podcasts and NPR